Album Review

Lillian Boutte's debut album, Lipstick Traces, is an appealing blend of classy New Orleans R&B, Southern soul, classic female blues and jazzy pop, all performed with a signature sense of swing. Boutte doesn't belt these songs out — she caresses them and delivers them with style. Her phrasing is closer to jazz than blues, but her music is inarguably blues, which means that her singing, her music and her album have a classy, sophisticated flavor that is quite alluring.